An intriguing discussion is taking place on Trainboard.com, a place for model railway engineers to discuss, well, model trains!

User ppuinn asks, "Has anyone used 3D printers to make structures for their model railroad?" We think that is an excellent question, since railway engineers will have need for all manner of small plastic building items, and likely could use custom-designed items frequently. To us, this seems to be a very ripe market for 3D print technology.

The engineers fear the price of 3D printers, and they should. They are definitely too expensive at this point. But what they don't know yet is that many 3D print service bureaus exist and could easily print out practically any design they wished to submit.

Resolution is an issue for model railway engineers. Their parts are very small, and must be relatively high quality to obtain the required visual effect. User Robbmann said, "The lower cost versions aren't capable of the resolution needed for HO, much less N scale."

One specialized service bureau has already emerged for this space, MakeMyModel.com, which apparently accepts 3D designs and prints out Z or N scale models.

In spite of these issue, we suspect that model railway hobbyists will very soon discover that is possible to leverage 3D print tech in ways they had never imagined.

Kerry Stevenson, aka "General Fabb" has been writing Fabbaloo posts since he launched the venture in 2007, with an intention to promote and grow the incredible technology of 3D printing across the world. So far, it seems to be working!

Fabbaloo is a daily online publication focusing on the 3D print and additive manufacturing industries. We provide deeper analysis of developments in current and future technologies as well as corporate matters. If there’s something happening in 3D technologies, especially FDM, SLA, SLS and Stereolithography, we’ll have an opinion about it.